Take My Tears
by Gwyn Paige
Summary: John is the only one who can make Sherlock cry. Johnlock as a pairing, but no romantic stuff. Post-Reichenbach, from Sherlock's point of view. Happy ending. Oneshot. Please review.


Sherlock had long ago figured out that John was the only person who could make him cry.

It wasn't exactly a long shot, really; John was the only person who could make Sherlock do a lot of things, such as eating and sleeping and not getting himself killed. But crying was different. Crying was something Sherlock never could have forced himself to do on his own; something he'd never even consider doing on his own. Emotions were cumbersome, messy, unpleasant things, doubly so if they elicited crying, and Sherlock had long ago convinced himself that it was best to leave them well enough alone.

But John, as usual, had to go and snap Sherlock's resolve in two that day on the rooftop of St Bart's. (Damn him, he'd promised himself he wouldn't cry, wouldn't cry, wouldn't cry, but then the tears went leaking out of his eyes and down his face and everything was blurry and John's shouts were only making it worse and he didn't want to leave him _John I am so sorry_ and he was reaching, reaching for John and the tears weren't going away and how could crying possibly hurt so much, _damn _him.)

It had happened again at the graveyard, the crying. It was after Mrs Hudson had left, when John had stayed behind and delivered a eulogy startlingly different from what he'd said at the funeral, Sherlock watching him from the shrubbery only a few dozen yards away. (And oh god he was so close, so close, only a few yards to the side, a few steps forward and he could take that horrible look on John's face and wipe it away forever and make everything good again and all it would take was a few steps and he couldn't do this _he could not do this_ not for three whole years.)

There was a third time he had cried, the night after the funeral alone in his shabby hotel room, while he was scrolling through texts on his phone (the ones signed with a _-JW_), remembering. He had felt the odd, still unfamiliar prickling behind his eyes, and though he blinked them back furiously, the tears began to slowly wander down his face, tracing his cheekbones and dripping onto the phone's dimly glowing screen. (He had thought he'd be okay, he had thought that being alone wouldn't matter because it had never mattered before but John had changed everything, everything and Sherlock wasn't just alone he was lonely and the feeling of loneliness was even worse than the feeling of tears in his eyes and he couldn't do this not without John and he had always said he'd be lost without his blogger but he'd had no idea how true that was until now.)

* * *

Every day he would throw himself into the act of hunting down and killing every last one of Moriarty's men, severing the threads of the great spider's web one by one. Sometimes he hardly stopped for rest for weeks on end, catching up on sleep in taxicabs and airplanes, eating only when he was on the verge of collapse. He wanted this terrible business over and done with as soon as was humanly possible (a barrier he was planning to test to its limits). He had set three years as the maximum, so perhaps if he worked himself to the bone it would only be a year and a half, or two.

Between chasing the men behind Moriarty's intricate web and traveling the world to find them, Sherlock would usually find time to cry over John. He'd lost count after the fifth or sixth time, something he'd never experienced before; Sherlock Holmes never _lost count_.

But crying was a new and unusual action for him, and the tears in his eyes seemed to blur not only his surroundings but all the other times he had cried, stirring the experiences and reasons and locations together into one gigantic, wet mess of sorrow, all for John. John, who deserved nothing less than every tear Sherlock had ever kept inside of him. Sherlock felt that perhaps every tear he held within his body was meant for John, had been preserved all these years only for John to draw them out in a way that no one else ever possibly could. _(Please, John, take them all, take every last one of them if it will help you in some obscure, impossible way, take my tears because they are all I have to give you and you deserve the world, John, do you hear me, the _world_.)_

Still, for the most part, the crying spells were manageable. They didn't interfere with his "daytime job" (and oftentimes it was nighttime too); somehow he was able to push John to the back of his mind while he was working, chasing criminals across the country or gathering information on just how far Moriarty's influence had spread. Work and John were two separate parts of his life, and now that John was safe (not alone, he told himself, _safe_), they never mixed, even in his mind.

All that went out the window about a year after Sherlock had left. That was when the texts started coming in.

The first one arrived with an unobtrusive _buzz _during a flight from Hong Kong to Paris. Sherlock wasn't surprised; it was probably Mycroft asking after his health or bugging him about something. Grimacing, Sherlock steeled himself for the inevitable argument that was about to ensue between him and his elder brother and glanced down at his phone.

But the caller I.D. did not say Mycroft Holmes, and the message was certainly not his.

_Look at me, texting a dead man. I must be going mad. -JW_

_(Oh god John I am so sorry can you ever forgive me please please please I'm not dead I'm not dead I'm _right here_—__)_

Sherlock attempted to shut down the emotional part of his brain, which was currently being thrown into turmoil. Obviously John did not know he was alive, the message itself revealed at least that much. But if John was still being watched by Moriarty's men and they saw that he was texting Sherlock, it wouldn't matter what the message said. They would think that John knew Sherlock's location or whereabouts and would most likely do something drastic for information. Thoughts of torture and blackmail flashed through Sherlock's normally calm and collected mind, but he managed to push them away before he was overcome by them.

He was thousands of miles away from Baker Street. There was nothing Sherlock could do for John now. If he texted him back it would only make matters worse, and besides, John absolutely could not know that Sherlock was alive until every last one of Moriarty's henchmen had been imprisoned or, better yet, killed. The only thing Sherlock could do was wait and hope that John would be all right.

A few minutes later, Sherlock received another text.

_I miss you, Sherlock. Life in 221B has been so dull since you left. I want to go on adventures again. Can we do that again someday, please? -JW_

Sherlock spent the remainder of the flight trying to hide his tears underneath a handkerchief, and doing it very badly indeed.

* * *

The texts kept on coming after that, a steady stream of them throughout the day and sometimes in the middle of the night as well. John certainly texted him a lot; most days Sherlock received more than ten, and it was unusual to receive less than five. Mostly they were just little things, like what John had for dinner that evening or telling him about his girlfriend of the week, but sometimes they would say something along the lines of "I miss you" or "I don't believe you told me a lie" or "Please come home." It was usually these texts that opened the floodgates for Sherlock. It killed him that he couldn't reply.

He started checking his phone at every chance he got and reading through the texts John had sent him while he had been off hunting down and killing Moriarty's agents. This caused him some problems. John was constantly on his mind now, not only between jobs but during them, too. It distracted Sherlock and ruined his concentration, something that he'd never had to deal with before. Work and John began mixing in his head, blurring the lines between the reality that was staring Sherlock in the face and the reality that sat calmly and sadly in the old flat on Baker Street, sending texts to a man whom he believed was no longer amongst the living.

Sherlock tried disciplining himself, purposely turning off his phone between jobs and only turning it on to use the Internet or hack into government databases. In fact, after a while, the only time he allowed himself to check his text messages was when he was in the process of gathering information on the next step in his task of chipping away at Moriarty's network, when research was the only thing occupying his time. And yet John's texts still managed to get under his skin, making salty liquid form at the corners of Sherlock's eyes, doing something that John and only John ever had the power to do.

The months went on, turning into years, and between the deductions and puzzles and chases and research and gunshots, there was silent scrolling down, down, down the screen of his phone, each signature of _-JW _punctuated by fresh tears, with John at the center, filling his mind, filling his heart that he now knew for a fact he had, because it ached.

_Went for a walk today in the park, then to the Tesco. Forgot the milk. Ha. -JW_

_It's been a year, six months, and eleven days since you fell. Lestrade says I need to move on, but I don't think I can leave you behind. -JW_

_Broke up with Julia. Wasn't my type, I guess. She wasn't you. -JW_

_I feel very alone sometimes. The flat's far too quiet. I want to find body parts in the fridge again. -JW_

_I miss you. -JW_

_Are you really dead? Sometimes I see you sitting in your chair and I can't tell if it's real or not. -JW_

_I'm learning how to play the violin. -JW_

_Been studying your cases from before we met. I wrote up the interesting ones on my blog. Yes, I'm still updating that blasted thing. -JW_

_Met this lovely woman named Mary the other day. She's sharp. Sort of reminds me of you. -JW_

_Lestrade asked me to help with a case. Personally I think I was rubbish but he said I was almost as good as you were. Anderson's still annoying as ever, but at least Donovan's being nicer. -JW_

_Had a nightmare about you last night. It was worse than the ones about Afghanistan. -JW_

_Mary broke up with me. It's a shame. You would've liked her. -JW_

_Why am I still texting you? -JW_

_They've got these ridiculous flyers going around now: "I Believe In Sherlock Holmes" and "Moriarty Was Real." I suppose it's good that you're getting support, but I can't get used to seeing your face everywhere again. -JW_

_Just so you know, I never believed it for a second. That you invented Moriarty, I mean. I may not be the smartest but I can tell when someone's lying about something that big. The only lie you told me was what you said on the rooftop that day. But it's okay. I forgive you. -JW_

_Thank you for taking away the cane, Sherlock. -JW_

_Thank you for everything, actually. -JW_

_Sometimes I go out for a run in the middle of the night and pretend you're still pulling me along. -JW_

_Can we go on an adventure again, Sherlock? -JW_

_Can you just be here with me? -JW_

_Two years, ten months, eighteen days. How did I survive this long? -JW_

_I'm not going to kill myself. I don't think you would be proud of that, so I won't. But I don't know if I can keep this up much longer. -JW_

_Three years to the day. -JW_

_I miss you. -JW_

_(John, I am so sorry.)_

_I love you. -JW_

_(I know, John.)_

_Come back. -JW_

_(I'll be right there, John.)_

* * *

Sherlock knew that John was the only person who could make him cry, but he hadn't known that tears of joy could apply as well.


End file.
